Diaries

Usually I write these recaps top-to-bottom; I construct a general narrative and then fill in the details as I go along. But not this week. This week, the game itself wasn’t all that illustrative. UM is a significantly better team than PSU. PSU would absolutely get housed by Colorado and I think UCF would give them a run for your money. The Nittany Lions have some talented players, but they’ve played like an entertaining mid-major for most of this year, not a sleeping giant like they’ve been portrayed as in the past.

And so, trying to glean much from this game was difficult. From that first drive when UM nearly got a safety and just crushed the world around Trace McSorley every time he dropped back, it felt like this was 3+ hours.

I thought this would be a nice test for the Wolverines, a good barometer for how they’d fare against the middle of the conference. If this is the case, then woo boy, watch out Maryland and Rutgers. But who knows what this game means, except that a woman being kicked by her own foot in a fake fight is the best distillation of this game, and really this series since James Franklin took over at PSU.

Best: No, Seriously, Just an Ass Kicking

Pour one out for poor Les

UM picked up 326 yards on the ground at 6.7 yards per carry, with 6 TDs, and if you throw out a couple of kneel downs it was closer to 7.2 ypc. Smith led the way with 107 yards on 12 carries and a TD, while Higdon, Isaac, and Evans all added at least one run over 25 yards and a TD. It was so dominating a performance on the ground that Peppers didn’t have a carry and nobody really noticed. Also, all the backs helped keep Speight clean in the pocket, especially Smith, who really is great at picking up blitzers and blocking them to a stand still. About the only down spot was McDoom’s first sweep getting snuffed out immediately by an over-active linebacker; Brian mentioned earlier in the week the Nittany Lions were terrified of those plays and they definitely showed it there.

And I loved some of the play calling as well; Evans’s TD run came on a long 3rd down where they ran a delayed handoff and Evans had lots of space to operate. The line seemed better at opening up holes compared to last week, which shouldn’t be a surprise given the limited depth for PSU and the fact nobody on the Nittany Lions was a fully-operational battle station. They’ll be challenged next week by an active Wisconsin team (especially T.J. Watt), but this was a nice bounce-back.

I still don’t know what the “real” Michigan rushing game is; it’s probably somewhere between UCF and this game, trending a bit more toward UCF. PSU is so undermanned in the front 7, I would have been disappointed had UM not been able to mash them up, though doing so to this degree was a bit surprising. We’ll know a lot more after next week’s game; if UM can string together some solid runs like they did here, that will go a long way toward keeping teams honest defensively.

Worst: Depths of Excuses

Before we go too much farther, I do want to point out a bone of contention I had with PSU fans continually claiming their mediocre performance is due to the ongoing recruiting issues stemming from the scholarship reductions. While it’s true PSU was limited somewhat on the recruiting trail, it’s not been a barren wasteland. Here is a chart of PSU’s recruiting numbers these past 5 years, taken from 24/7:

Year

National Ranking

Conference Ranking

# of recruits

2012

46

8

23

2013

33

4

16

2014

24

3

26

2015

15

2

25

2016

20

4

20

Yes, Penn State had some limitations in terms of class size, but this wasn’t a team unable to recruit solid players to their program. And yet, the offensive line remains, at best, below average, with additional depth issues along the defensive line. Nobody can prepare for losing all 3 starting LBs, but this is a team that seemed to live off the last couple years of Joe Pa’s tenure and Bill O’Brien’s first year without properly replenishing the stock at key positions. Over Franklin’s first 3 years, they’ve recruited a total of 12 offensive linemen, exactly 3 in the top-250. Offensive line is always a bit of a crapshoot, but at least some of their issues do come from ineffective recruiting on the offensive line and, to a lesser extent, the linebackers and defensive line. The sanctions are all gone and their effects, whatever they are, should be mostly gone by now. I just don’t buy that their struggles keeping their QB upright is mostly due to a couple of missed scholarships.

Best: A Rudockian Performance

The good news in that Wilton Speight bounced back from last week’s struggles against Colorado; he completed 62% of his throws for almost 200 yards and a TD. He wasn’t sacked though he was under pressure a bit; he largely responded well, running for a 1st down on a 4th-and-7 play, throwing a dart on another 4th down that was dropped, and generally keeping his eyes downfield while on the move. He’ll never remind you of a Gardner or even an Andrew Luck on the run, but one of his really underrated traits is Speight’s focus downfield as he moves. He isn’t necessarily a threat to run, but since he always seems capable of making a throw downfield you keep pressure on defenders to stay on receivers, which led to some nice completions. At some point in the 3rd quarter, he had been 7/7 on 3rd down, picking up 4 FDs in the process. He also showed a bit more zip on the ball, which leads to an issue I saw a couple of times.

For whatever reason, Speight struggled a bit guiding balls to receivers on pretty simple throws. He threw a ball very low to Khalid Hill on third down on UM’s first scoring drive; he was bailed out by Hill digging it off the turf for a first. But had that ball been higher, Hill might have scored. Later on in that first half, he miffed another ball high to Butt on a screen that probably would have led to UM walking in for another score.

This wasn’t a game where Speight was asked to do much and you could tell the game plan was simplified a bit once it became clear that UM could run all over the undermanned PSU front. But I definitely left this game believing Colorado was a bit of a fluke, buoyed a bit by how they played in Oregon. It’ll be interesting to see how Speight handles Wisconsin’s pressure, but he definitely seems more comfortable back there than Rudock was at this point last year.

Meh: Catchy Guys

I can’t tell how much was play calling and how much was the defense, but I’m a bit concerned UM continues to struggle a bit throwing the ball downfield. Chesson hasn’t really taken the top off of teams recently, and in this game he had 1 catch for 18 yards, which is an improvement over last week’s no-catch outing. In his stead Darboh and Butt had good games, but UM’s offense needs that playmaker outside, and Chesson not getting deep (and dropping another catchable ball) is a bit troubling.

On the more positive end, I thought Darboh played great in this game. There was a 3rd-down conversion in the first half where Speight threw the ball 6-7 yards short of the sticks and let Darboh fight off his defender and run for the first. Normally I’m not a fan of passes short of the line on 3rd down, but this was a perfect play call because it took advantage of everything Darboh does well: solid hands in coverage and the power and speed to fight off a tackler. And Grant Perry had a couple of nice catches as well, as he seems to be growing into the slot position. And Jake Butt is Jake Butt; he’s the best pass-catching TE in the country and he remains a matchup nightmare for teams. I know PSU was down their entire LBs, but Butt basically got open at will all day.

So overall, a fine day for the receiving corps, but I am definitely hoping Chesson can integrate himself back into the passing game soon.

Best: Simple, Unrelenting Pressure

At some point in the first half of this game, I legitimately wondered if James Franklin didn’t understand that getting his QBs crushed for 4 quarters was probably why all of them seemed to struggle. At halftime, Trace McSorley had been sacked 5 times, hit probably another 4-5 times, and barely had enough time to set his feet before he had to run for his life. And Michigan was doing this at most with 5 rushers; on that first drive UM sacked McSorley twice with straight 4-man rushes. After years of hearing about how the defensive line wanted to “earn” the right to rush 4, this year’s team has garnered such rights in droves.

Officially, UM had 13 TFLs for 45 yards, including 6 sacks for 27. In reality, they probably would have broken 20 had they not took their foot off the gas a bit in the 4th. Taco Charlton picked up right where he left off before his leg injury, recording 1.5 sacks and adding some nice edge control when PSU tried to run outside. Mo Hurst had a big sack where he just ran past the center, showing that burst we all heard about when he came to UM. And Wormley nearly got a safety on the opening drive when he just drove the PSU tackle back a half-dozen yards.

Plus, UM was able to do this without getting a huge day from Peppers, at least on the stats sheet. He had 5 tackles and that huge punt return to start UM’s first drive, but otherwise he was relatively quiet. I sensed UM didn’t want to tip their hand much before Wisconsin, but it was pretty amazing to see them throttle an okay PSU offense with a standard front. They just dominated the individual matchups, and that doesn’t bode well for a lot of other offenses in this league if UM can get into the backfield this easily, this consistently.

And they front 7 largely held Saquon Barkley in check. He’s a great runner in space and has good size and hands, so the fact he finished with about 75% of PSU’s total yardage (77 in the air, 59 on the ground) shouldn’t surprise anyone. But beyond one nice little run that was helped quite a bit by Mike McCray getting picked off by a PSU WR he definitely wasn’t even looking for as he tracked Barkley, he could never get going and was taken out of the game quickly. After weeks of chasing around guys relying on misdirection and broken assignments, you could tell UM was prepared for the more “predictable” play calling from PSU, and I expect a similar level of play next week against Wisconsin.

Best: Nobody to Pick On

After Michigan ran out to that big lead and PSU realized that Barkley wasn’t going to be able to get much going on the ground, Penn State became very focused on trying to find a matchup in UM’s secondary they could use to move the ball down the field. They tried a slant or two at Lewis in the slot with minimal success, and outside of a couple of short balls to Gesicki they couldn’t get much going with their mid-distance passing game. So under heavy duress, McSorley tried to get the ball to Hamilton and Godwin downfield. It didn’t lead to much success, as they combined for 2 catches for 19 yards and a TD.

What I did notice was that PSU clearly went after Stribling more; before going out with an injury, PSU seemed to throw at him once with Godwin that was a failed circus catch and that was about it. They went after Stribling a bit harder, and he responded with two pass breakups and generally looked the part of a top corner. With Clark out he’ll be expected to take hold of that outside corner spot, and thus far this season he’s looked the part.

Worst: I Don’t Understand Penalties

This is nothing new, but it seems to happen every year that as soon as I think I have it down, the rules or their applications change.

So PSU’s walk-on-turned-starter Brandon Smith was ejected for targeting on a play where he tried to pick off a pass to a falling Grant Perry. Yes there was contact to the head, but Smith was absolutely making the play on the ball and that should be allowed. Michigan fans know all about questionable targeting calls, and it was hard to understand what else Smith could have done in that situation. Even on review it doesn’t look intentional or particularly dangerous, unless we are going to redefine what is a defenseless player to an extreme degree.

And the weirdness didn’t end there. UM got hit with at least two dubious pass interference calls in this game, one each on Clark and Stribling. In Stribling’s case, the ball was thrown yards short and both him and I believe Godwin were battling for position; it was the definition of rubbing in racing. Clark also got dinged for a similar play in which the ball was high and outside, and the PSU receiver sort of jumped into him and drew the call. Considering Chesson had gotten mugged only a bit earlier on a similar play, it was difficult to get a sense what the refs were seeing.

I do get that UM’s defense is so dominant that at times officials might feel the need to call a penalty to stem the aggressiveness, much like how Shaq was often officiated differently because he physically dominated players to a degree few had seen before. UM had 13 TFLs, including 6 sacks, and it took some garbage time for PSU to even crack 100 yards passing. And UM is a very “handsy” pass defense, in a similar vein to the way UM fans complained MSU did when their defense was dominant. But at the same time, if one team is just beating up another it doesn’t mean they are doing anything particularly wrong, only that they are better. It’s not some massive issue, but I do cock and eyebrow when the team that won by 39 was found guilty of 5 more penalties for nearly 70 yards than the opposition.

Worst: 6th Year Roulette

So Jeremy Clark injured his ACL on a kick return late in the game more notable for the hit put on Jourdan Lewis by PSU’s mammoth punter.

Clark at least has the opportunity to apply for a redshirt because of the timeliness, if you will, of the injury; Mario Ojemudia missed out on the same opportunity despite a similar injury because it occurred one game later on the schedule. But Clark already took a redshirt his freshman year, and so the team will have to provide evidence he was actually injured then and not just a casualty of the depth chart and/or uncertainty for his position with the previous staff. While the NCAA can always amaze you with its decisions, it’s not a given that Clark will get another year. If he does come back in 2017, that provides a huge boost to that unit, as Clark was playing like an all-conference corner when he went down, and with his combination of size and speed he gives UM flexibility to put him on an island against basically anyone and hold his own.

How this injury affects the 2016 defense will depend heavily on how well freshmen like Lavert Hill and and David Long can take on their roles in this defense. You still have lots of veteran players in the defensive backfield, and getting back Jourdan Lewis is huge, but before Clark went down those young guys were a bonus; now, they are going to be expected to contribute. This is why I tend not to bemoan lost redshirts at positions where depth is an issue, but we’re going to learn pretty quickly how flexible this defense can be with a major contributor out.

Worst: Class Warfare

The internet is a terrible place. It’s terrible for all the reasons you’ve heard of: the misogyny, the racism, the violence, the “your vs. you’re” pedants, everything. It’s the place that reminds you that everyone you see at your office, your bus, your train, in your car on the road, at the grocery store squeezing melons is probably an asshole about something and you wouldn’t want to hang out with him or her if you knew.

Sports on the internet is probably right up there with politics as the fetid pond most attractive for the most navel-gazing, self-righteous, uninformed discussions on barely-hidden dog whistles and long-held grudges caused by long-forgotten wrongs. So much is wrapped up in the colors and logos people are wearing on the field, in the institutions and mentalities they represent, that you wonder sometimes if the outcome of the game really matters.

Now, I’m not a fan of a clearly-overmatched team being beaten into further submission for no good reason; I totally understood Clemson and South Carolina State using shortened quarters in the second half of that blowout. And you could make the argument that PSU’s injuries on the defense meant they had limited depth and you were possibly exposing kids to injuries in a game that was long decided. But at the same time, it didn’t feel like UM was being needlessly aggressive here; they weren’t sending the house on every down or throwing deep just to run up the score. They threw the ball 11 times in the second half, most of the time during the 3rd quarter when the game was still a reasonable 28-3. And challenging spots even when the game is decided is what Harbaugh does; he is going to ride an official in the 4th quarter as hard as in the first, and while “being right” can certainly be grating, most successful football coaches are wired that way. And on a more practical matter, gameday is one of the few times a coach and team can work on a lot of these finer points of football; with a limited number of practice hours and the necessity to keep guys healthy, even blowouts give you opportunities to analyze your team and recognize how they’ll respond in more pressing situations.

But what gets me is that fans (usually on the losing side of a contest) devolve to “classiness” as a means to denigrate others in the most trite way possible, the insinuation being that while you might be better on the field, we are better people because in some hypothetical world in which the situations were reversed, our coaches and players would show “mercy” or whatever insulting manifestation of pity that is a substitute for a little blue pill on Saturday. It puts so much emotion and biases into what is a pretty mechanical process; to think a coach has some metric in his or her head that says “below this number of points I play to win, above I show benevolence”. Coaches are paid to win games, and unless you are one of those weirdos who tries to prove a point, you are going to coach like every play matters.

And I’ll admit to being that guy sometime. I’d like to say I’ve tried to tamp that part of my down as I’ve aged and sports have come to occupy a normal-size part of my life, not the outsized part it did before life sort of stepped in, that I “matured” into someone with foresight. But that’s probably a bit of a lie; it’s more that maintaining that level of cognitive dissonance is just too draining. Being a UM fan doesn’t make me a better person than those who root for rivals, and even if there was some way to measure relative human quality, it wouldn’t have any bearing on what happens on the football field. It’s like when you read long arguments between Alabama and Ole Miss fans discussing which state is more “backwards” and “dirty” of a program. It’s a game of Calvinball without any of the charm and even less of a sense of reality.

But with a couple of rivalry games coming up against MSU and OSU, I’m not looking forward to more and more twitter eggs complaining over which side of a game that generates billions of dollars for old men in suits and large corporate entities “classily” beat the snot out of each other.

* And yes, I know all about this not being a Constitutional expression argument; I’ve seen XKCD.

Meh: They Are Who We Thought They Were

I wish I had more to say about this game, but I’m running out of gifs to convey how much of a an ass-kicking this was. Oh wait, I found one more.

So on to the rest of the weekend and next week.

OSU had the weekend off, but other UM opponents of interest had games this weekend, and it felt like we finally got some confirmation about their true identities. As always, you don’t want to read too much into the first week of conference play, but after the vast variability in quality of non-conference opponents, seeing teams like MSU, Iowa, and Indiana play teams we have some historical sense about is helpful in getting a solid read on their abilities.

Iowa barely got by Rutgers a week after failing to just get by NDSU. That Ferentz deal is looking like an even better decision right now than it was when they first made it. And the funny thing is, Iowa isn’t playing all that poorly in a lot of these games. It’s a very vanilla team on both sides of the ball, but Beathard is a good passer (60% completion, 8 ypa, 8:1 TD:INT), they can run the ball a bit with Wadley and Daniels Jr., and the pass defense is solid (#31 nationally). The one major drop-off is in rush defense, which is giving up about 50 yards more this year than last, but at least part of that seems to be due to sheer quantity vs. quality. They’ve held Miami (NTM), Iowa St., and Rutgers to around 3.6 ypc, with only NDSU getting close to 5 ypc. But against NDSU and Rutgers, they’ve also faced 102 rushing attempts, which is going to mess with your numbers a bit. Obviously, if a team feels like it can stay close then it’ll run the ball more and not take their chances against the Hawkeye secondary, but I’m not sure how much different this Iowa team is compared to last year save for a slight degradation in defensive performance. That still feels like a scary game. Rutgers is, well Rutgers, and they lost Janarion Grant in this game and it didn’t look pretty. It’s the team’s first road game and all so there’s obviously some uncertainty, but Chris Ash might not be sleeping all too soundly next week all the same.

The other half of the relevant undercard was Indiana battling Wake Forest. I caught the opening play, a 75-yard TD for IU and figured this would be a blowout. And based on the box score, it should have been; IU had 611 yards(!) of offense compared to Wake Forest’s 352, passing for 496 yards at 10.6 ypa and 3 TDs. Both teams averaged about 3.6 ypc, and neither team was particularly great on 3rd down conversions. But IU threw 5 picks, including 1 for a TD, and had 9 penalties for 84 yards. And the final score even made this game closer than it should have been; IU scored a TD with 11 seconds left to pull it within 5. Richard Lagow is an agent of chaos in and of himself, but until this game he was having a great season throwing the ball, and Devine Redding is still an incredibly dangerous back. And IU played reasonably solid defense against the Demon Deacons, at least given the opponent. They’ll still get plastered by UM, but this was just one of those weird games, I guess. Of interest here, the Hoosiers welcome the Spartans this week, and that laughter you hear is mine as I contemplate MSU’s corners trying to keep a wrap on IU’s wide receivers.

The headliner for the weekend was obvious MSU-Wisconsin. The conceit was 2 fringe playoff contenders were meeting as (perhaps) a preview of an upcoming B1G championship game rematch. Wisconsin had taken down mighty LSU to open the year, while MSU shook off some early struggles against Furman in the opener to open a huge lead at Notre Dame, and ultimately held on for a “big” win that popped MSU into the top 10. It was going to be two smashmouth, defense-first teams, and to a subset of the viewing public it would be glorious. And for about a half, that was right. And then the wheels fell off, as Wisconsin’s aggressive defense returned an L.J. Scott fumble back for a TD, got another short field off a fumbled punt attempt, and MSU never really got going. I know MSU fans will point at the yardage total (MSU picked up 325 while Wisconsin finished with 317), ignore starting field position (Wiscy had a 7-yard advantage on average) and turnovers (4-2 for Wisconsin, with 1 of those two Badger turnovers an INT on a heave to end the first half) and claim this game was close. But I watched the second half of this game, and MSU simply could not move the ball consistently at all. They finished 4/13 on 3rd down, three 3 picks, and allowed a freshman QB (Hornibrook) go 16/26 for almost 200 yards and a TD, oftentimes leaving his receivers with cushions they could fall asleep in on third down. None of their receivers could consistently get open or pull in balls save for Corley, and he’s a freshman and got pushed around a bit in tight coverage. O’Connor doesn’t have the vision or arm strength of make the throws Cook did last year to bail them out, and Scott behind that offensive line feels like a bit like Barkley at PSU. And yeah, Duke just dropped 38 on the Domers, so it probably isn’t that impressive anymore MSU sorta stumbled into 36.

On the other side of the ball, it’s not a revelation to call MSU’s secondary subpar this year, but without anything resembling consistent a pass rush (only 3 sacks), that secondary is a mess. It’s just not a good team, and anyone thinking this is 2013 again hasn’t looked at the roster. They’ll be “fine” this year, but if you see a rapid drop in the number of people you didn’t know attend or care about MSU until 6 years ago talking up the Spartans, don’t be surprised.

As for Wisconsin, they look extremely tough defensively (at least against the run; O’Connor’s well-documented penchant for locking onto WRs and throwing into triple-coverage was on display in this game, making it hard to figure out where his bad play ended and solid coverage began), and their offense is definitely more comfortable with Hornibrook than under Houston. Wisconsin isn’t necessarily an aggressive team in the front 7; UM has more than twice as many TFLs (44) as the Badgers (21), and that’s with T.J. Watt’s national top-10 sack total (4.5 sacks). But they stop the run (about 80 ypg) and hold up reasonably well against the pass, though massive caveats apply as they’ve faced one pretty good passing attack in #19 Akron and then a bunch of bad to average attacks in #119 (LSU), #94 (Georgia St.), and #69 (MSU). UM’s opponents haven’t been much different (UCF and Hawai’i are bad, PSU average, Colorado good), but at least UM has throttled them with the exception of a couple of bombs to Colorado. If Speight can play within himself and the offense can get balls to Perry and Butt early to loosen up the corners, I could see UM having some passing success against the Badgers. Rushing will be a bit more of a slow go, but this also feels like a game that Harbaugh will gameplan a bit for.

And the guy looked poised out there; he dropped a ball between two MSU defenders for a 3rd-down conversion in the 4th quarter that was almost perfect, and he only forced a couple of bad throws all day. Of course, he’s also a freshman and the competition level on both sides of the ball is going to make a huge jump for them even if LSU’s defense is pretty good, but the Badgers be the first real defensive test for UM that they might not be able to just out-talent. If nothing else, the offensive line is going to be under a new level of pressure run blocking and pass protecting in this game. At the same time, LSU got significantly better throwing the ball when a failed Purdue QB took over, and they still hung in okay against the Badgers, so who knows.

Wisconsin is definitely better than I thought they’d be this year; the defense even with former DC Dave Aranda is solid, and their offense can run the ball a bit with Clement and Ogunbowale to protect Hornibrook a bit. At the same time, UM’s defense is built to eat up Wisconsin’s offense, and should be able to keep them behind the sticks for long 3rd downs most of the day. It’ll be a close-ish game because of the defenses involved, but I see UM being able to throttle Wisconsin far more effectively than the other way around, especially if the turnover battle stays close to even.

PSA time:

I will be traveling far away for a birthday party next weekend. There will be children, old people, and a strong chance of zero college football on the screen. I will DVR this game, but I make no promises this post won’t be a bunch of happy or sad gifs next week. Plan your bathroom breaks accordingly.

Well, one of my biggest fears after this game was that we really wouldn't have too much to discuss given how well the game went, but as it turns out, there are a few things we can at least go over and that is what we shall do here.

First, let's point out something rather positive about the analysis - this was a "great" game. Indeed, that's the most common word in this week's analysis. "Great" actually outpaced "fuck", and even the "fuck" was pretty positive overall. 123 instances of "great" versus only 107 fucks, which is not something that we manage very often even in these much better times.

Let's delve into the fucks though - a great majority of them actually center around one particular moment in the game, and that is Clark's injury. That goues for many of the instancse of "shit" too, so while it was a mostly positive day, the misfortune that football can bring to a team was obviously at play in the numbers.

The overall picture - this was a very small thread as open threads in the last year go at only 1,356 posts, but in those posts, we had 496 instances of tracked words, which makes for an efficiency of 2.73 - that is consistent with a Harbaugh win in the revised scale. A similar result before 2015 would have been reserved for the wins that came out of our ass, or worse, losses.

Now, for those of you who missed Thursday's introduction of some potential advanced metrics which adjust certain words for tempo and attempt to gain a better understanding of the threads, this will seem like a strange thing to say - the 107 fucks and 62 shits, when adjusted for tempo, produced the following:

Fucks Adjusted for Real Time, or FART Rate - 0.535

Fucks Adjusted For Total Plays, or FAP Rate - 0.764

Shits Adjusted For Real Time, or SHART Rate - 0.315

Combined FART / SHART, or SQUIRT Number - 1.698

Based on history, 1.698 would be consistent with a win. Now, the "Real Time" we are discussing here is airtime of the game, which accounts for those who - like myself, at least this week - watched from home. Total Plays is just that, all 140 snaps in the game yesterday, in this case.

Now, at this point, I would throw a few chart in here. However, Photobucket is acting up, so I will throw them into the piece when I move it to the Diary section.

In summary, it was a very breezy day in the Open Thread, with not too much going on - "great" was used for everything from the defense to the running game, "fucks" were great too. Most interestingly, our most sparing praise - "Awesome" - even made five appearances, and all but one of the instances of "fire" were aimed at James Franklin, and that remaining one was aimed at Matt Millen, who did BTN's coverage of MSU / Wisconsin, because Lions fans remember.....or do we remember....

Wisconsin should be interesting, both on the field and in the threads.

Who's ready for a football game where it actually feels like Fall?! Consider your request filled, we have a great day ahead of us! Cooler air is moving in behind a cold front that passed through southward Friday morning, and as high pressure scoots on down from Canada, we'll clear out the skies. It's one of those days to dress in a couple layers - you might want long sleeves to start the day, but will appreciate the t-shirt later. Let's beat Penn State!

Tailgating

Mid 50s if you're an early tailgate bird! It's a good day for the hot coffee and to really start using that crockpot! Winds will be out of the NE at about 8-10mph (just enough to blow leaves about - so you might want to tuck the napkin pile under the cheese dip) and we'll have a cloudy beginning to the day. By lunchtime we'll be up to the mid 60s with the clouds starting to break up! Winds will have shifted a bit to the ENE, staying on the lighter side around 7mph.

Kickoff

Hello sunshine! Although some clouds will hang on for the start of the game, we'll still have a decent amount of sun - enough that you may want to wear the hat or bring the sunglasses in with you. We'll hit 72 for the kickoff, but a reminder - once you get in the stadium it'll feel a little warmer, especially with some sun. Winds will be out of the E at around 6-7mph (just enough to rustle the leaves).

Halftime

Not a whole lot changes during the first half of the game. Temps will be holding steady at 72, and we'll still have some clouds and some sun. If you haven't already, you'll probably be shedding those long sleeves! Winds will be out of the E at 5mph (just enough for you to feel it on your skin).

Post-Game

Upper 60s and a few clouds as you walk out of those gates, hopefully to head out and celebrate a win over those nittany lions! Winds will remain easterly and light. Not a bad evening to head out to dinner or grab a couple brewskis, especially if you didn't forget your long-sleeve shirt at the game! Temps will stay in the mid 60s through the evening, dropping to around 60 by 10pm. Planning on staying out 'til those lights come on? We'll have mainly clear skies and a light breeze, and by then that temperature will have fallen into the low 50s - so one step outside & you definitely won't forget the long sleeve shirt at the after-party! C'mon blue!!

Christina Burkhart is the morning meteorologist for ABC in Flint, MI. She grew up in Ann Arbor and associates Saturdays with Michigan football. Go Blue!!

EDIT: So Notre Dame obliged us by doing their best impression of basketball season, and Michigan now leads, .7307 to .7306. Wolverine 247 is reporting it, but their numbers are way off. They're reporting .7324 to .7323. I have no idea how they came up with those numbers; they don't make sense at all. Even Notre Dame's preseason media guide reported their all-time percentage as .732 (with a preseason record of 892-313-42); there's no way a 1-3 record puts them at .7323.

EDITED AGAIN: Wolverine 247 has corrected their numbers.

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A few MGoUsers have noted that Michigan can retake the lead from Notre Dame in all-time winning percentage tomorrow, if Michigan beats Penn State and Notre Dame loses to Duke. Anyone want to delve deeper into both the races for all-time winning percentage and number of wins?

The current records of the schools are:

Notre Dame: 893-315-42, 1250 GP, .7312

MICHIGAN: 928-331-36, 1295 GP, .7305

(Note that the NCAA figures a tie as half won and half lost.)

All-Time Best Winning Percentage:

Until 2004, for decades Notre Dame easily had the highest all-time winning percentage among all schools. I suspect that during most of that time, if Michigan was not #2, it was at least third or fourth on the list; the point-a-minute era gave Michigan a good head start over most schools, Crisler righted the ship a bit in the ‘40s, and then Bo came along.

Notre Dame first overtook Michigan in all-time winning percentage in 1920, as the Rockne Era was just ramping up and Fielding Yost was starting to slow down a bit at Michigan. The big day was October 23, 1920, when Michigan lost to Illinois and Notre Dame beat Valparaiso; Notre Dame slipped ahead that afternoon, .7917 to .7898, and didn’t look back for more than 80 years.

Flash ahead to the end of the 2003 season, when Notre Dame’s 84-year lead was shaved to just .0001 after Chris Perry and John Navarre beat Ohio State with Notre Dame not playing that day.

On opening day in 2004, Michigan took over the lead, .7461 to .7454, with a win over Miami (Ohio) and a Notre Dame loss at BYU. But the very next week in South Bend, Garrett Rivas kicked field goals instead of a rookie Chad Henne throwing touchdowns, and the unranked Irish upset the Wolverines 28-20. Notre Dame retook the lead, .7457 to .7454, and maintained that lead for three weeks. On October 2, Notre Dame lost to Purdue and Michigan won at Indiana to retake the lead .7461 to .7456; this time, instead of just a week, Michigan would hold a very thin lead for nine years.

December 28, 2013 was our next pivotal moment, with Michigan losing to Kansas State in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl and Notre Dame beating Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl. Notre Dame retook the lead .7330 to .7324, and that’s more or less where we are today.

If Michigan beats Penn State tomorrow and Notre Dame loses to Duke, Michigan will inch ahead of the Irish by the narrowest of margins, .7307 to .7306.

Looking ahead, if you’d easily like to predict the course of the percentages over the season, given the two schools’ number of games played and percentages of past wins and ties, a win these days raises the school’s percentage by about .0002. A loss lowers the school’s percentage by about .0006.

It’s fascinating to look at a graph of the two schools’ season-end winning percentages over the past 100 years:

The rise and fall over the century is nearly identical. Rockne took the lead over from Michigan and built it up. Both schools experienced similar drops in the 1930s until rising again in the Leahy and Crisler years. Both took dips again in the 1950s. Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine righted the ship for the Irish in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and Bo did the same for Michigan. The difference then was that aside from Lou Holtz’s uptick in the late ‘80s, Notre Dame experienced a slow but steady decline starting with the Gerry Faust years, while Bo, Gary Moeller, and Lloyd Carr continued slowly but surely to build the numbers for Michigan.

The highest winning percentage Michigan ever reached was .8228, on November 25, 1905. The Wolverines beat Oberlin at Regents Field that day, 75-0, in the last win of Fielding Yost’s amazing point-a-minute unbeaten streak. The next week Michigan would lose to Chicago 2-0 at Marshall Field in “The First Greatest Game of the Century” when Amos Alonzo Stagg had finally bought enough players to beat Yost (plug for John Kryk's fabulous and fascinating book: "Stagg vs. Yost: The Birth of Cutthroat Football").

Notre Dame’s highest ever winning percentage was .8221, reached on November 14, 1931 in a 20-0 win over Navy in Baltimore. The Irish would lose their next game at home to USC, 16-14.

So not only do the schools' historical rise and fall in percentage roughly match on the graph, but each school reached its historical apex at roughly .822, and could climb no higher.

Biting at the heels of Notre Dame and Michigan are (current percentages as of last weekend):

1. Notre Dame .7312

2. MICHIGAN .7305

3. Boise State .7254

4. Ohio State .7230

5. Oklahoma .7204

6. Alabama .7187

7. Texas .7105

Ohio State is particularly alarming on that list, given (1) the recent gaudy record juggernaut in Columbus that doesn't look like it's stopping anytime soon; and (2) a Michigan loss to Ohio State corresponds to a roughly .0008 swing in all-time percentage -- Michigan really needs to stop losing to the Buckeyes, obvs.

All-Time Number of Wins:

Michigan started playing football nine years before Notre Dame, and played more games than the Irish did in Notre Dame’s first few years. As of today Michigan has played 45 more games.

Michigan always had a commanding lead on Notre Dame in number of wins until the 1960s, when Bump Elliot’s lean tenure at Michigan coincided with Ara Parseghian’s reboot of Notre Dame’s program.

Notre Dame finally caught Michigan in all-time wins on November 24, 1967. On the day after Thanksgiving, Notre Dame won at Miami to tie Michigan’s 501 wins; Michigan lost the next day to Ohio State, and the teams would open 1968 tied.

1968 opened with Notre Dame beating Oklahoma and Michigan losing to California, for a ND one-win lead. The next week the tie was on again, with a Michigan win at Duke and a Notre Dame loss to Purdue. Bump’s last season was one of his best, and Michigan didn’t lose a game the rest of the way except to Woody Hayes’s national champs; 1968 finished with Michigan one win ahead, 509-508.

Bo kept that one-win lead through 1969, with the year finishing 517-516, advantage Good Guys.

Notre Dame would tie Michigan again at the end of the 1970 season, with a win over No. 1 Texas in the Cotton Bowl; 526-526.

As with winning percentage, in total wins Michigan was greatly helped by the Bo/Mo/Lloyd relatively steady hands at the wheel while ND foundered with Gerry Faust, Bob Davie, Tyrone Willingham, and Charlie Weis. And Bo’s record in the ‘70s was good enough to leave just about everyone in the dust, even Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine.

A few seasons back, before Texas fell off the cliff for a few years, the Longhorns briefly moved ahead of Notre Dame for #2 on the wins list.

Next up on the wins list behind Michigan and Notre Dame are (as of last weekend):

In the latest installment of “The State Of Our Open Threads”, someone had asked for some historical perspective on some of the data, and I decided that it would be a good idea to go back through the data on two of the more common words among those tracked – “fuck” and “shit” – which are, incidentally, two of our more indicative words, and see exactly what the history of each could tell us about the last three years of the board on football Saturdays.

The main analysis is for the regular season only, although I do have bowl data. Being that the period was from 2013 to now, I kept the bowl data separate since, well, we didn’t go to one in 2014. That aside, it was interesting to go back through the old data and see what might be gleaned from it that hasn’t already, not to mention see if there were any more interesting metrics that we had not devised yet.

Before we get into some new metrics, the raw data for each word should be examined.

The raw, unadjusted fucks are charted below, beginning from the start of 2013 to now. For purposes of this stab at the analysis, the bowl game data is excluded.

You can see the bulge in 2015, which has a lot more to do with the enthusiasm at the beginning of the Harbaugh era of Michigan football than anything else. As there are fucks of frustration, so there are fucks of elation, and quite a bit of what is going on there can be explained that way. If we scan the last two years of Hoke’s time here, a few games immediately stand out specifically for how angry we got – 2013 Penn State, 2013 Iowa (80% of those fucks were 2nd half fucks), and 2014 Rutgers. Over there, the “fucks” point to what MGoBlog may have deemed watershed moments in the waning days of the previous coaching regime.

Now, the unfettered shit.

You get a similar story for Harbaugh’s time to date actually, although “shit” tends to be the one we reserve more for plays or calls that do not go our way, and there was enough of that even in the wins in 2015 to explain that. It had an interesting run in 2013 and 2014 too – it was in relatively heavy use in the 2013 Iowa game and then it hit unheard of levels for the 2014 Utah game, a game punctuated by a rain that said without words what a lot of us were feeling.

After a few discussions with people, I began to realize that we need another level of this analysis – the fucks must be tempo adjusted to get a better handle on just how we felt, so there are two ways we can look at this. One is the Fucks Adjusted For Real Time (i.e., approximate airtime in minutes, accounting for those at home), or the FART rate and the other is Fucks Adjusted For Total Plays, which we will call the FAP Rate. They will look similar to the previous “Fuck” graph but perhaps they tell us a few things.

Here’s FART Rate:

So, we do see a few things here – the highest FART rate belongs to 2015 Indiana game, followed closely by the 2015 Michigan State game, both of which contained some hairy moments – I’ll put it politely.

Perhaps FAP Rate says something different:

Similar to FART, but telling you how many fucks on average were tossed into the open thread per offensive and defensive snap, and like FART, showing you a little bit how game length and game speed can affect our fucks.

Let’s do the same thing for “shit” using the same data. That will give us “Shits Adjusted For Real Time”, which we will call the SHART rate, and “Shits Adjusted For Total Plays”, or SHAT because that sounds better to me.

So, here’s the SHART rate for this period:

One thing is clear at this point until 2014 Utah, “shit” was not quite the shit on the blog. Clearly, it has seen a majority of its use since that game.

SHAT Rate should probably look similar:

It does. The 2015 Minnesota and Penn State games have the highest SHAT, which I find interesting because at least during the Minnesota game, I am sure I used that word quite a bit.

There’s another transformation that we can do here at this point. Let’s look at the FART / SHART combined ratio and see if we can get a good handle on how we were using these words relative to one another in recent years. We can call this the SQUIRT Number for the threads.

Here’s what that looks like:

The highest SQUIRT numbers clearly belong to 2013 Penn State and 2014 Rutgers. The average SQUIRT over this period is about 2.81, so basically for every three fucks, there is a shit. In the two games just mentioned though, there was a tendency to run with fuck rather than get mired in shit and I don’t blame anyone either.

Anyway, this is just a warning that you may see some more analytics on occasion.